Lavender Hills
by Laqueus
Summary: When the world ends, the sky does not burn, nor does the land become choked with dust. Instead, Nature reclaims what the humans have built and borrowed; she regins over all and watches as her children roam the earth. It is in this era, in a decaying farmhouse surrounded by endless fields of lavender, that Emily finds someone new. [Tremily, Post-apocalyptic AU]


_AN: Before we begin, I wanna say two things. First, the cover image photo is courtesy of__ Nikolay Hristov on Unsplash. Secondly this is__ a quick content warning - just to say that this fic contains a certain amount of dead animals in it, along with a bit of butchery, and also some content of an implied sexual nature/bent. Which is also the closest I will ever brush to that particular topic in this particular fandom._

_We all cool here?_

_Cool._

oOoOoOoOo

When she first spots the lavender fields, endless rows of shrubbery stretching outwards in a slow, steadily-saturating gradient, her immediate thought is '_Wasteland_'. Others – in her group, in the world, in the past, _whoever_ – might have gotten caught on the sight of the flowers, might have some sweet words to say about them and their thriving growth; that it is one of Nature's miracles; that despite everything, these flowers are reclaiming the earth that once was theirs; that they are Nature's will made flesh.

She is not one of those people – _Nature-worshippers_, she thinks derisively in the darkest corner of her mind – and has not been anything akin to it for many, many years. Not since _before. _That in itself is a word that carries a host of meanings, like parasites in a corpse. No, she only sees the wide expanse and the lack of cover that seems to stretch all the way to the horizon, where it continues onwards and upwards into the sky; ploughed lavender mirrored in ploughed rows of stormy mammatus clouds, both in varying shades of dusky amethyst.

Except-

She squints, narrowing her tired eyes and training them on the horizon. It's been a long, bone-weary day, full of endless tramping and seeking and scouting; by this point she carries little seeds of tiredness within her flesh, ready to bloom into something greater as soon as she stops; vines that will choke her, sap her strength further and prevent her from rising for a time. She knows all too well the dangers of tiredness; it makes you slow, makes you stupid.

It leads to mistakes.

But tiredness cannot deny the thing she espies on the horizon, a rough block squatly sticking up among the lavender shrubbery. The thing seems like an impossibility, a modern-day mirage. It's a building of some sorts. A farmhouse, she guesses, but at the same time she readies herself to brush that guess aside. Just because a building sits within a host of what appears to be open farmland does not mean that that is the truth. The world has been tilted upon its side, the pieces all mixed up; what once was a certainty is now little more than several different pieces forming the shape of the past. A building in the middle of farmland could be no more than a single survivor of a street, as Nature reclaims the land around it.

But even if it is not what it appears to be, a building is an open-ended question. One that she desires an answer to.

With an experienced eye she gauges the distance, weighs up the cost of energy in her mind. Looks upon the clouds, and sees the promise of a storm. She shifts from one foot the other, weariness lining her bones, pack cutting into her shoulders. Puts the questions to her companions in a voice that is beginning to develop the rough notes of a one going hoarse. The first companion – Miskit, the lagomech – is quick to respond, a bevy of negatives falling from his mouth. He speaks quickly, gestures emphatically - at the clouds, the building, the path they've already travelled - as he talks. He's a thinker, a worrier, eternally weighing up everything on an internal set of sales within his CPU. Sometimes she has little patience for his ways, chewing over a scenario until it has been masticated into something unrecognisable; but most times she manages to remember how his caution has kept them safe in times past. She nods idly as he rabbits away. The second companion – her brother, Navin – is both slower to speak and more receptive, though the ghost of caution lingers about his words. He too, sees the storm clouds. He too, is tired. But he cannot hide the spark in his eyes at the thought of technology to tinker with; that is his role within their group, and it is one he fiercely defends.

_Still…_ he draws out the word, testing one foot as he does so. A misstep into a hidden warren entrance half an hour before has hobbled him somewhat. Even if they do not say it, the same thought resounds in the siblings' heads. Better to rest an injury like that, than temporarily ruin the rest of the leg in a foolish attempt of overexertion.

She nods to herself, and shoulders her pack, the leather strap a familiar texture beneath her half-gloved fingers.

A solo mission then.

She is careful to avoid disturbing the lavender as she walks, sticking to the gaps between the rows planted years before. It is not that she holds any particular love for the shrubs, instead it is an action born out of caution and necessity. The last thing she wishes to do is be out in the middle of nowhere, her feet showing a clear path of where she's been; a clear path of where others may find _her_. The blooms brush against her as she goes, straining and crowding against their planted formation; their pungent, herb-like scent rises into the air around her, and coats her clothes. Despite the distance, she feels the weight of her companions' gaze upon her back. She does not look behind, but can imagine them all too well; two tiny figures, standing at the edge of the field, watching – one, two – and now they are turning away in order busy themselves with a variety of small tasks. Little rituals that life demands. The preparation of food; the repairing of tools. _We do this in your name, so that you might grant us more time. Another hour. Another day. Another pulse of blood through our veins._

The walk is long; she keeps her guard up, her ears open, but all that carries to her is distant birdsong sailing in on the soughing of the wind. Drawing closer to the building, her guess gathers strength; a stone farmhouse with a roof of corrugated metal. Swathes of it have rusted away in a series of sickly reddish blooms; an array of dark, red-rimmed eyes that stare out at her, stare out at the fields, stare up off into the welkin. Ivy steadily webs across one wall, a lumpy coating of emerald green. It's a stocky structure and would've made for a sturdy – albeit small - home.

Her tread grows lighter as she approaches, her manner more cautious. What, or who, lurks inside?

There is little to fear, however, as she is soon to find. The dwelling is truly abandoned. Dust paints a thick layer upon everything; it dances in the dim light from filthy windows, spirals slowly in sunbeams. All the furniture that remains is old and heavy, anchors in time and artefacts from another era. Some of it is broken and smashed, other pieces have collapsed under their own weight, but most is intact.

She moves like a ghost from room to room, eyes roving over anything and everything, seeking payment for a journey she has already undertaken. Moth-eaten sofas crouch in a sitting room; the legs have collapsed from under both, and now they sag sadly together. A tiny washroom houses an old, cracked toilet, and pieces of what used to be a sink; around her, the shabby, sun-bleached wallpaper peels away from the walls in great long curls. Half a bed remains in a bedroom so spotted with mould that it hurts her lungs. She climbs a set of narrow, creaking stairs up to the first storey – the entire space taken up by an attic - but stands on the threshold of the room and goes no further. Below her the floor bulges downwards in an unstable way, singing secret songs of rot and decay. _There is a path_, it whispers, _but it is not yours to know. Not yet._

She respects that. Withdraws, for now.

And then, in the kitchen, there is a boy. He stands with his back to her, by a sink that's long since been rendered dry, the taps rusted away to little more than stumps. Something in the angle of his stance, the spread of his shoulders, the firm planting of his feet and apparent comfort in the space says '_Claimed_'. A weight sinks into her stomach at the sight; she knows it is simply because the day has been long, and she has ventured out of her way on a fool's errand to reach this odd little spot, but still she cannot help the thought, '_Oh hell, not a territory dispute_.'

The boy swings around at the sound of her; his face pinched, an old scar cleaving it like an axe-strike in a tree. He's around her own age, carrying a firmly-secured rucksack on his back, and strikes her as one who's immediately ready to take off and go. There is something to be said about that little detail, a fact it is hiding and representing, but for the moment it is irrelevant to her. Both of them eye one another warily, and she gets the distinct impression that were they not bound by the dimensions of the kitchen, they'd be circling one another.

As things turn out, there will not be a territory dispute.

They speak in terse, clipped terms, a bare-bones discussion between two people who wish to exchange the most basic of information without revealing anything else. There is no introduction; why would there be in these times?

She speaks of moving, of a group, of the salt-sickness voiding their old territory. This final fact is more a courtesy than anything else, a rule born from the era they're living in. A warning that the land has temporarily soured; that for a great many months to come, only spirits will make their domain there. You do not hinder those who have been displaced via the salt-sickness, for one day it will be your turn. It is a law as inevitable as the migration of birds, as the turning of the seasons.

He nods; speaks in turn of having no territory, of passing through the demesnes of others with a light tread. If she and hers wish to claim this territory, he states with hands up in a supplicant gesture that is a fraction too tired, then there shall arise no resistance from him. The land is abandoned, but there is a water source two miles northwest, he adds, a scrap of information dropped into the pot.

Conversations like this are an elaborate trading game, rules and regulations hidden in both tone and cadence. It is a fact she knows all too well, and is why she gifts him some of the cured rabbit in her pack. She digs out a piece for herself, feeling some measure of strength returning to her bones as she consumes the salty meat.

He inspects his own piece; tucks it away in the pocket of his slate-blue coat.

Outside, the sky rumbles ominously. She chews thoughtfully, eyeing it through a cracked pain. Though the sky might be beginning to complain, the air lacks the proper chill and dampness that heralds a storm. Still, the road to the edge of the field is long; Navin and Miskit will be waiting. There will be other days to return and salvage.

Swallowing the last of the meat, she takes her leave.

And as she crosses back across the seemingly-endless fields of lavender, she feels the boy watch her go.

By the time she returns, a temporary, makeshift camp has sprung up at the edge of the lavender fields; Navin sits with an elevated foot, Miskit stirs soup over a small fire. Her report is brisk; not much to find on a quick visit, but she'll return another day and unearth whatever can be salvaged.

She does not mention the boy.

oOo

Once the group's proper camp has successfully been established - areas set out; a water source found with collection duties rota'd and assigned; a series of low, humped canvases of varying material now rising from the ground - she returns far south to the farmhouse.

To her surprise and mild chagrin, he is there again; in fact she has cause to suspect that he never left, though it is an unfounded assumption with no evidence to stabilise it. Much later on she will learn the truth; that she was incorrect and that that second meeting was mere coincidence, life throwing down knucklebones with the result forming a picture. Few words are exchanged between them as she scavenges. She is a steady, methodical worker, slowly casing each room, searching through it with a single-minded determination. Nothing escapes her gaze.

Wood, she eventually decides. Wood shall be what she takes away from here. There is little else that would be of use to her family, little else that will not be an encumbrance. She manages to find a few glass jars in a cupboard, but everything else that is small and portable has already been taken by other scavengers from other groups. Her eyes automatically flick to the boy. Spread out on the floor, rucksack cushioned under his head, he appears to be sleeping. A farce, really, and she knows it; his body is too posed, too ready for one sunk in slumber. Wise, really, when a stranger is afoot. She knows she would do the same, were their positions reversed.

With dust-covered hands, she returns to her search.

Months pass, eventually lengthening into a year, and she continually boomerangs back to the old farmhouse. Oftentimes she brings a hatchet to hack at the furniture, splintering it down into bundles she can easily carry back. Sometime the scarred boy is there; most times he is not. Only when they meet for the fifth time - when a month has passed since she first discovered the farmhouse - do they finally reveal their names; little trinkets to be clipped to their respective forms. She is Emily. He is Trellis.

_Strange times make for strange bedfellows,_ she mutters. He snorts out a sardonic sound that verges on being a laugh.

Looking back later, this is the moment that she considers their friendship to have begun. It is a strange one, tough and twisting and bristly but strangely swift in its growth. The whole affair puts her in mind of the ivy that consistently spreads across more of the house with each passing moon. There is a strange sort of sense to it though; something within each of them recognises the other, fellow kindred spirits. Kindred spirits in what, neither of them know, and neither will continue to know for a long time. But they are pragmatic, forward facing; in their eyes this detail does not matter, and so neither of them loses any sleep over it.

Still, she does not mention him to the rest of her group. He is hers, a living secret, a pocket of air frozen in ice. Though she loves her family and would gladly – _gladly!_ – do anything in order to keep them safe, at times they are a hair shirt; rubbing and aggravating her through simple presence alone. During those times she finds it a relief to be able to escape somewhere. To have someone else, someone who has not seen her grow up, and is not part of her life for every minute of every day - and will probably continue to be an inescapable part of it until either their life or hers expires.

Not that she would ever wish such a thing. Never. A dark, unwanted desire, hiding unheeded in the hollow of a felled tree like an accumulation of fungi.

So if her respite comes in the form of a former stranger out in the boundless fields of lavender, who is she to reveal the secret?

oOo

Her group never does adopt the lavender fields as part their territory. Their lands go right up to the boundary, where grassland ends and shrubs begin, and there they stop. A clear, dividing line that resists any attempt at expansion.

Oh, there are a great many minor reasons for the boundary stopping there, answers picked from the topmost layer of the brain without any significant thought behind them. But there is no major or _real_ reason. Her mother, Karen, says that there is too much land for them to manage, whereas Cogsley takes a similar stance to her own and thinks that it's a wasteland; Vigo is of the opinion that it's too undefended; Aly likes it but views it as lacking mechanical resources; Navin would rather it be a field of aero-parts; and on, and on, and on.

Personally, she doesn't mind that this is how the border lines have fallen. The land is not hers, nor is it his; instead it is a wild, neutral wasteland that carries an element of uncertainty and threat whenever she steps onto it. It is too big, too open, too wild for any one group to control – though surely that is a lie, for once upon a time a group of people did control it and now their legacy is living in the soil, written in rows of purple-headed shrubbery. It feels as if any one moment it could be taken from her, and she finds a peculiar kind of beauty in that. Out of everyone, she is the only one who readily ventures deep into the fields. The others may dob in and out of the edge, but she is the only one who goes all the way to the house on the horizon. And there, with a marker of ivy-choked stone and decaying tin, her personal territory ends. Something within her cannot bring herself to venture beyond; time and time again she stands looking off into the sea of shrubs that lies ahead, and is filled with a dizzying sensation that she will be swallowed whole should she step out. It is an open ocean in shades of purplish-blue, and she is on the precipice of a coral reef, swimming safely among the colourful calcium carbonate. Such concepts are pointless nonsense of course – it's just a normal field - but the brain is a wadge of watery fat that's prone to being a tit.

Sometimes though, she wonders. What is beyond the curve of that rise? Where does he travel from, when he comes to their farmhouse? What paths does he take? What else is there, in that great stretch of wilderness?

Aimless wonderings; questions with answers that she does not care to find.

In summer they harvest the flowers. As they work, her mother holds a sprig up and speaks their secret meanings from the old world; attributes ascribed by those long-dead. Purity. Silence. Devotion. Calmness. Some flowers they dry and make into little parcels to help combat the smell brought on by long days of travel, and long periods between washing; others are made into soap using what little lye they've managed to scrounge up; yet others still they steep into a tea. Emily boils some of the flowers, watching them bob about in the beat-up metal pan. Hears the water hiss its steaming song. Later she will strain them, mix the leftover fluid with melted beeswax she stole from a hive, and make a salve. The resulting concoction is stored in a variety of tins and jars left over from the previous era. Her results from the process are nowhere near great, but it is good enough for minor itches and irritations; Nature knows they have plenty of those. She often makes a little too much, an intentional error in her measurements. Gratuity for a ghost that only she knows of.

After a time she starts to find gifts tucked away here and there in the farmhouse; bound willowbark hidden in an alcove between rafter and roof; a small bundle of jerky in the drawer that requires a knack to open (angle it into the corner, then pull slowly); a small measure of tanned leather in the gap beneath the bedroom door. On one occasion, a knife wrapped in old goatskin, hidden in the farthest corner of the attic where the rusted roof still held and the rains cannot reach. They're always placed carefully, tucked away in the neutral, forgettable places in a house where first-time scavengers won't think to look. Always something long-lasting, always something useful.

She in turn hides things for him to find, and looks upon it with a small measure of relief when she finds them missing. Portions of rope wound around a beam; a small sewing kit tucked into the gap between two cupboards; a tin of her home-brewed salve placed within the porcelain remains of the broken sink. When Bottle finds an old first-aid kit among the remnants of what the group guesses to be an old library – now little more than a crumbled wall choked with greenery - she surreptitiously swipes a couple of bandages from it, along with an intact foil sheet of ibuprofen tablets. Amazingly, they are pristine, sitting safely untouched and rattling away in their little plastic cellars. The expiration date may have passed, but she – like everyone else - pays it little mind. There is a small measure of guilt at taking supplies from everyone, but it is quickly justified away; there are many of them, and only one of him. They are secure in the bonds they have made; they can search and scavenge over a greater area. If one of them is injured, then there is a certain level of insurance afforded them by dint of being in a group. He, meanwhile, is for all intents and purposes alone. She hides the man-made treasures in another man-made treasure – an old freezer bag – and hides it away in the wonky dresser drawer.

When she next checks, it is gone.

On one notable occasion she arrives at the farmhouse to find him skinning a deer; it hangs from a beam by the legs, its decapitated, de-antlered head sitting to one side. When she expresses some incredulity at such an accomplishment, he gives her a wonky half-smile, and states that he stole it from a young bear when it and another of its kind began to fight. The truth lies in the carcass - part of the hide is ruined where the bear bit through the delicate throat. Together they work the animal, dividing it down into parts; bones and meat and hide and tendons and blood, their future lives paid for by its death. Whatever they cannot use or carry, they bury in the field. An old-world burial. An offering to Nature.

It is an affair that spans several days, and there is an easy partnership between them as they work in tandem. By the time they are ready to transport the spoils, everything neatly packed up and away, they leave the farmhouse together. They remain that way - even when they pause to take turns washing in a stream; pink-tinged water carried off and away - until they are roughly a mile into her group's territory. Only then does his nerve fail, and he takes his leave. She is unsure, but something about the concept of a _group _makes him wary, skittish. She shrugs it off however; it is not her place to pry. His history is not a book for her to browse through, nor is her history a tale for him. Half of the deer remains are his, and half are hers – an agreement made days past whilst peeling skin from flesh, hacking legs from a body; they part on good terms.

A wall of worry greets her when she finally crosses back into camp – _where have you been? What happened?_ – but it melts into amazement and incredulity alike when they see the heavy burden she carries. It provides an explanation of sorts - she knows it is a bad-fitting one – but everyone is too distracted by the spoils to query it.

That evening, as she sits by the fire feeling secure among her family, Navin approaches. Immediately she can tell that this will be a continuation of earlier; that he has examined her explanation and found it holey and wanting. Questions are carried within the curve of his body, the swing of his step, the slant of his eyebrows.

_Where did you get the deer, Em?_ he asks. His words are a cave-stream, and there is an undercurrent of accusation flowing through them.

Both preparing the deer and the heavy journey back have left her tangled and choked with bindweed-like tiredness. As a result, her words come out sharper than intended; a sudden cat's claw.

_It was stolen from a pair of fighting bears. What does it matter?_

Displeasure creases her brother's face; in the next second he has changed tack. Ah, she thinks with a bitter sense of triumph, this is the real meat of the matter. What came before was merely the same song played simpler on another instrument in the key of _worry_.

_It matters because you could've been in danger! You keep disappearing off for ages, and when you return you're nothing but secretive. You- you're barely around anymore!_

_Neither is Leon, but I don't see you burning his ass about it. And so what if I am? I'm just doing what needs to be done in order to keep everyone alive. I never return-empty handed, for ****'s sake. _Aggravation, previously hiding beneath her words, erupts to the surface. She does not wish to explain about Trellis, does not want to be manoeuvred into a position where she is forced to explain about him. If she must tell them, then she wants to do it in her own time, at her own leisure.

With a single, sweeping surge she is on her feet, and stalks off to her own tent. Deep within her, her muscles protest every step of the way.

Her brother does not follow.

The next day she overhears a snatch of conversation between her brother and mother; she pauses from sharpening her hatchet to better listen.

-_can't you say something to her?_

_Emily's seventeen, Navin. I know it's concerning - especially when she's out there all alone - but she's sensible. It's difficult, but just give her some space. This is still a new territory, and we're all a little unsettled. I'll try and-_

She chooses not to hear any more of it, and her hatchet is soon sharpened to a fine, anger-fuelled point.

oOo

Nature-worshippers love to harp on about how it is in Nature's nature to leave messages in the world that surrounds them; how anyone can hear these portents and understand, if only they have the patience to listen. How secret knowledge and powerful divination shall be revealed to those who do. The animals possess this gift – a natural, Nature-bestowed talent - and they are masters at using it; see how they flee from flood and disaster; see how they know where is best to make their homes; see how they automatically know how best to care for their young!

That was the spiel Emily once had been forced to listen to years before, when a group of Nature-worshippers travelled with them for a time. An odd lot, they smelt of sage and smoke and scilla. Tears of joy threatened to spill over when they finally departed, taking their both ceaseless prattle and clatter of bone amulets with them.

She has not thought of them in years, but in this moment the memory suddenly surfaces like a windfall apple in water as she passes through the warped doorway into the farmhouse. The distinct sensation that something is wrong spears through her, quick as kingfisher's dive.

The sense of trepidation only grows as she moves through the house until-

There, on one of the shabby sofas in the living room, lies Trellis. Ice drops into her stomach, her blood suddenly undergoing a winter snap. Fever has fastened its hot jaws around his neck; sweat paints a painful sheen across his brow; his forehead burns up under her hand. How long has he been there? she wonders, panicked. How long has he been like this, suffering and alone in a wasteland filled with nothing but flowers?

He curls in on himself like a dying moth. Tremors rack his body, as if his form is trying to break apart under its own pressure. A dream of flesh neatly peeling apart at the seams; of skeleton without structure; she thinks of the deer, how it was sliced apart into pieces under their hands. Although she knows that this malady is not the sort to go away in a single afternoon, it is hard not to be aware of the passing of the hours. She tries not to timekeep, tries not to watch the horizon; but despite her best efforts, she is all too aware of the way the light changes in the room. Shadows creep around the walls and floor, twisting across surfaces, lengthening and cutting off as the sun moves across the sky. The light slowly sinks through the spectrum, going from white to yellow to orange, until there comes a moment where she is forced to pull her emergency lantern from her pack. Thunder rumbles in the dark, the wind howls like the unquiet dead, and lightning arcs down to the land, striking it with a vengeance. A storm descends upon them, rain lashing against the remains of the roof with such fury as if it carried a vendetta against them both; _I know you are in there! I will prise you from your shelter!_ It is almost symbiotic, as if Nature herself had reached into his chest and tied lifeline of both storm and sickness together, his physical body acting as this anchor. For two days he shivers and sweats, murmuring incomprehensible fragments of words; for two days she stays by his side, both of them trapped together by forces beyond their control, mopping the sweat from his brow and forcing water from her steadily depleting canteen down his throat. At least the thunderous rain means she will not run out completely. In that same vein, at least the storm's intensity will provide a good reason for why has not returned to camp. She would have stayed regardless had the weather been fine, instead weaving a lie for the others with fine, skilled fingers. For a brief time in the first night he emerges into a shaky lucidity; she takes the chance to feed him some soup from an old thermos, and some jerky. But it is a short respite, and he soon lapses back into the fever. Occasionally he cries out a name, _Luger, Luger_. Whenever that name splits the air, some sorrowful statement follows; _Forgive me, brother, I did not know! I'm carrying it with me, don't you see? I killed you, but he would not care; he will never care! Where is the justice in that?_

But all things in the world end - winter fades into spring; rabbits become sun-bleached bones scattered among the grass - and eventually the storm peters out as his fever breaks. She breathes a sigh of relief when it does, feels a lump of thorn-sided flint dislodge from her heart.

When he is well once more, she questions him on the name he called, the things he spoke in the deep darkness of the storm. Initially he refuses to elaborate upon it, dismissing her outright with a sharp shake of his head. It is only a week later, when they are out in the yard, prising apart a cupboard, that he finally lets the truth free. It flutters out into the air, and comes down to roost in her heart. As they methodically break apart planks, he tells his tale. He speaks in low, flat tones of a father – "_the_ _bastard_" - who was more monster than man; a father who gained that title merely by virtue of siring sons and then did little else except abuse until his progeny fled into the darkness one night. Of an elder brother – Luger - who came down with an old-world illness. Of the illness itself, the sort that stuck in the bones, that only an old-world hospital could have culled. Of the choice he, the younger brother, had to make one day: either to stay and care for Luger, or to seek out a nearby group and barter with them for medicine. He chose to go, and returned both successful and ebullient, bearing carefully traded medicine.

But he had made the wrong choice in choosing to go, and it was too late.

He returned to a still-warm corpse, and has been alone ever since.

Silence spreads out, sits heavily in the air. Off in the distance, a red kite keens as it wheels, soars away.

Now she knows, now she understands that this is what she recognised in him all that time ago. She too, carries a similar wound in her heart. Much to her own surprise, she begins to speak. It is a living secret, one that has never passed beyond the boundaries of her group. She talks of a father, of an Ikol, of an accident. Sometimes when you are fleeing, you do not see what is in front of your feet until it is too late. In his case, it turned out to be air, a place where the ground dropped sharply away with no warning. Oh, how a body tumbles and flails as it falls, before being brought to a sudden, bone-crunching stop.

They did not have time to bury him.

And later, when they returned, there was no body to bury; swept away by dark-tinted winds, as if her father had been little more than a dead leaf in autumn.

The burden of death was hers, for she had suggested the route, thinking that the Ikol would not wish to follow them there. Her mother and brother disagree, the rest of the group disagree, but in her heart she know the truth of the situation, and it is thus: the burden is hers. The death is a blackening upon her soul.

The silence that sits between them is a melancholy sort, filled with unspoken thoughts. Again, the piercing, undulating whistle of the red kite rings out in the air. It knows nothing of trauma, of death. It only knows the knowledge within its bones, woven through the fibres of it muscles; it only know the upwards stroke of wings upon the winds; of eggs in the spring; of chicks and hunting and the constant relay of feeding.

Because in that moment it feels right, she embraces him. The action is mutual, mirrored by him, his arms curling around her own form. There they stay, seated on the hard ground, tucked into one another's arms, the planks of a deconstructed cupboard to their left, an old half-toothed saw to their right. Spreading as far as the eye can see, an endless sea of lavender waves gently in the breeze. Silence. Devotion.

_We fashion manacles from our own guilt_, she says, _and carry those chains forever._

oOo

The sun is barely above the horizon when she wakes; the light casting a pinkish hue on the camp and its assorted sleepers. A groan bubbles out of her and she flips onto her other side, ready to try and force herself back under into the world of sleep, like mallard dipping down into a river. But the body seldom pays attention to the wants of the mind; wakefulness crackles through her, a day's energy begging to be used. When it becomes clear that further sleep is nothing more than a fanciful dream, she heads out into the woods that lie to the west. She carves a slow circuit through the trees, checking snares and traps alike; resetting those that have sprung without success. A pheasant is in one. It is the work of a moment to twist its neck; to tie its cooling body to a loop on her pack. A rabbit is in another. Another twist by skilled hands, another body hanging alongside the first. Their lives in exchange for the continued lives of hers and her loved ones.

The forest spreads out around her in every direction, a sun-dappled cage in shades of grey, green, and brown, as early-morning birdsong fills the trees. In these moments she finds it is easy to feel like she's in a bubble; that she is the only one left in the world; that there is no biome but forest.

She pads deeper in, feet making little noise against the duff.

A twig snaps to her left. Quick as a whip her hand lashes out; it meets something with an impact that judders through her arm. The thing crashes backwards into the leaf litter, and she wheels backwards; hand automatically going for the gifted knife; thoughts of bandits in her head, and-

_Trellis?_

His name slips from her mouth; a noise that is half-question, half-incredulous.

Indeed it is him, sitting up with one hand clutching his face, a low groan escaping between his teeth. There is no time for further questions however, for in the next second he has rocketed to his feet, scrambling into her personal space. With uncharacteristic urgency he grabs her wrists; at this distance she can see a dark swipe of grey underneath each eye, see the red infringing upon the sclera, and see the tiredness lining his face.

To find him here, so far into her group's territory, is jarring; he seems almost at odd with his environment, as if a newborn spring lamb were happily cavorting about in the deepest depths of winter.

He speaks quickly, quietly, jigging her wrists every so often in his agitated haste; though his words are short and to the point, the state of his body fills in the gaps which his speech does not cover. His legs tremble every so often; he stutters out words as if the mechanism of his mind were skipping; random little tags of nature are caught in the nooks of both body and clothing – an assortment of leaves and twigs, tufts of grasses, a bird feather. A cold seam of ice twists through her as she listens. An Ikol has spun up in the south and is steadily creeping northwards. Yesterday he was roving two territories south of here when he encountered a spooked trio of Nature-worshippers who told him the news; clad in coats of green and brown, bird feathers and deer teeth adorning them, they seemed to melt out of the hedgerow. Their leader had a wad of jay feathers tied around her wrist. It'd bobbed about as she gestured, a soft flash of russet.

He'd listened to their warning. Looked to the south. Looked to the north; quietly gauged the predicted path.

And then he had run, taking off at a sprint as if the Ikol were there, slowly twisting behind him. No thought in his head save for ones of an old, weatherworn farmhouse, and the group who lay beyond. No thoughts but of _her_ and the chains of her past.

He ran, only stopping when he stumbled or fell or when his body forced him to. What is the use of a messenger if they are dead, the words forever caught between their teeth?

A sluggish horror twists within her at the news; it is slow, deep, and most of all _dark_. Immediately she makes to return to camp, one of his hands caught in hers. He yanks it free, retreats back a couple of steps.

Reluctance is writ within every line of his form; he will not go to where a group is. Affection warps into worry, and she snaps at him. Still, he refuses to join them, instead giving her agistated false-sounding assurances that _he has done this before_, that _he will be fine_.

There really is no time to row; with every passing minute the Ikol draws closer. Pain from prior trauma spikes within her, again she snaps at him and now he snaps at her, though later neither will remember what it was that they said. All they know is that they were emotion-fuelled words from the heart. They spoke a truth, but an incorrect, unmodulated one that oft slips out during arguments.

Again, there is no time. If he has decided that that is the hill he is going to die on, then so be it; she races back to camp with both heart and lungs aching alike.

As the group prepares to hide in the woods, packing away all that will consent to be packed at short notice, an anxious tension permeation both air and actions alike, a realisation sits within her breast. It is the unfortunate kind; a painful truth that spreads over all like a swathe of cobwebs. She cares for him; cares too much - almost to the point of hurting, like rubbing at skin until it is raw - for this strange wanderer. Clouds above, she has built a bond with an embodiment of the winds, nurtured within the walls of the farmhouse like an embryo within an egg; has tethered it to her heart. Transient boy, foolish girl.

He remains a burr hooked into the back of her brain as she works; as they all heft packs and flee west into their woods; as they hunker down in a dried up hollow where a stream once flowed. The once-lively treetops are now silent of birdsong; the animals have all gone to ground.

From there, all they have is patience; it is a waiting game of the worst variety. An unwanted guest descending on half-expectant homeowners.

They hear the Ikol before they see it. Peek up and out over the rise. Through the shuttering of the trees, they behold the phenomenon stalk along the remote juncture where land meets sky.

In many ways the Ikol resembles a hurricane of old, albeit one that has put on a winter coat. All of them watch with wide, fearful eyes as the black funnel cloud slowly twists its way across the horizon, seeking any sort of civilisation. Long streaks of purple wind through it, curling around its circumference like a claw. Most of unnerving of all however, is the sound it makes: a stuttering sort of faraway wind that sounds almost like a drawn out laugh. _Hoo, hoo hoo hooooo, hoo hoo hoo hooooo._ For now all they can do is sit and wait and pray that it does not come to the woods. Nature is abhorrent to an Ikol, and in the canon of their modern-day mythology the two are enemies. When an Ikol comes, you shield yourself in Nature's breast, and it will pass you by. Karen is not a Nature-worshipper, but Emily hears her mother whisper a prayer under her breath, watches as she runs a hand down the weathered bark of a pine.

Despite herself, a long strip of silver birch bark peels away from the trunk under her own fingers; she fashions it into a flimsy bracelet of a charm, and hopes that wherever he is, he is safe.

Time passes. The Ikol steadily wails its way into the distance, until it has crossed beyond the horizon and is lost to them from sight. Caution is a virtue however, and they wait several more hours, crouched among the leafy rot of prior years and seasons. Only once there is no chance that the Ikol will return do they emerge, slipping out from between the trees like a host of wraiths.

The campsite is mostly untouched, thank goodness. And amazingly, the farmhouse is intact, too. But then again, she reckons, what Ikol would want to pass through such an impenetrable barrier of lavender for such a small prize?

As is their custom, they next encounter one another at the farmhouse, and it is a meeting filled with a certain measure of regret and contrition from both sides. Agreeable apologies slip from their mouths, the same song from different passerines. He bends down to embrace her, and it is as if a dam bursts within her chest; relief that he is still solid, still _there_. She holds him in turn, but when the moment stretches on a heartbeat too long, threatening something that she is not willing to acknowledge just yet, she whacks him on the arm in a jovial fashion; tells him he smells, and shoves a bar of lavender soap at him. His retort is just as swift, telling her that she should keep it for herself even as his palm closes around it. Instead she should have this, a reel of wire traded to him a week back.

She laughs, and his voice joins hers, but there is now a bittersweet ache present in her chest. The meaty flesh of her heart knows what it wants, so too does the watery fat of the brain, but she does not allow herself to profess it.

oOo

One morning, as the season is folding itself into autumn, she wakes, restless. The day is cold, overcast, the threat of rain quivering above them all like a nervous horse on the verge of kicking. She moves through her set of daily campsite tasks quickly, clumsily, but still restlessness writhes away within her; a beast that will not be settled no matter how hard she works. It sits low within her form, seeping out into her limbs; an itching need to touch, to feel, a longing for skin-upon-skin contact. Through dint of sheer bloody-mindedness she completes her jobs; the second a second of free time opens up she is flinging on her coat and pack, heading towards the camp boundary with a half-barked called of "Heading off." A small chorus of acknowledgements follow her out; tendrils of assent that hook into the skin and will draw her back to them when her business is complete.

In this way they make amulets out of the bonds knotting and webbing between them; casual words formed into prayers that their loved ones will be drawn back to them.

Her feet carry her on autopilot towards the lavender fields – a sea of mint-green in this season; it is only when she trips over a root a third of the way into the walk that she shakes herself, forces herself to concentrate. Just because something is coiling within her, a liquid heat threading through her veins, does not mean that she now dwells within a different, safer world. From that moment on she is more vigilant, and remains that way for the rest of the journey.

A dull stab of frustration lances through her gut when she arrives at the farmhouse and finds it empty. It is only to be expected, of course; there is not a schedule for their meetings – never has been, never will be – but today his immediate absence grates upon her. She feels foolish and frustrated, like a child throwing a tantrum about an issue they don't understand whilst above her the adults share indulgent looks between one another.

She bides her time, going through the house, passing through faded rooms and across dusty floors already made well-known to her months ago. Much of the wooden furniture is now gone, but some pieces, such as the fireplace's façade and the cabinet in the kitchen, are too large and hardy to be destroyed. She gets the distinct feeling that if she were to strike such an object with her hatchet, the hatchet itself would be the one fracturing into pieces.

When he eventually turns up – miracle of miracles - several hours later, she's sitting on the old kitchen cabinet; the tough wood is smooth beneath her fingertips. The urge to fling herself at him is strong, but she tamps it down, seals it under cartridge paper. A firework whose fuse she is dying to light, but dare not. Instead she greets him casually. Something in her manner shows though; a subtle intent displaying itself in the shadow of her actions, akin to the posturing dance of a great crested grebe. It is a note that he picks up on, and now her grebe has a partner, for she sees something in his own demeanour slowly change; something long-hidden coming out of hibernation. Something similar to what is presently poisoning her; oh, the shape and form might be slightly different, but it is undoubtedly the same species. It sends a dark thrill shivering through her.

The rules of their association are changing, melting and reshaping into something different; on this day they stand closer than before, and yet both seem not quite ready to cross that final hurdle. Instead they act as they always have done, a pattern laid out in a host of meetings before; through this they conduct a slow, strange courtship as they pass through the house; peppered with seemingly-accidental points of physical contact: her hip bumping against his leg as they move between one of the collapsed sofas and a grimy dresser, the glass in the latter long smashed or else gone to scavengers. His hand giving a quick tap on her shoulder in order to draw her attention to last year's swallow nest wedged above a rafter. Her body leaning into him as she peers out of a grubby window, dirt making a dark corona along its edges. His hair draping near her shoulder as they both try to decide if an old desk has a small carving, or whether it is just the knotwork of the wood; secretly they both know it's a DIY project made of an unholy mix of MDF and formica, but therein lies the sport.

She swiftly grows tired of the game however, and during a moment of pause, pulls his mouth down to hers.

He, in turn, does not pull away, instead leans in to the contact.

The beast within her stills, goes quiet. It knows what is coming.

They kiss, again and again, a slow, simultaneous sinking of one into the other; from there it is an easy slope to slip down further, down into something that lurks within the blood, which lives in the dark and quietly ferments.

Their hips are flush against one another, their lips slotting together. She can feel his desire resting against the inner curve of her thigh; her own desire pulses low and steady; two birds singing the same song across the empty expanse of miles. _You've wanted this,_ she says. It is a mere statement, not an accusation. He murmurs an assent under her mouth, breathes agreement across her skin; warmth and desperation bloom in equal measures within her at his touch, his words. There is a heartbeat of a moment where she buries her head in his shoulder - the hump where trapezius descends and transitions into deltoid - and divulges words into his skin; _I've wanted it too_. That prompts a low groan from him that lances straight through her, stirring something ancient and urgent. As she draws him down to one shoddy sofa and makes ready, she thinks of Nature – tales told to her from old books, things she has seen during her life of travel. She thinks of salmon, swimming vast distances – water transitioning from salt into fresh - to couple at their old home; she thinks of corals sitting secret in the deep, spawning under a full moon and turning the salt water cloudy with new life; she thinks of stags rutting in the autumn, the sharp crack of clashing antlers ringing out through the trees. She thinks of gangly, long-limbed hares racing through the fields and rearing up to box with muscled legs.

Then-

Above, the rain finally breaks.

The sound of it fills the air for miles around, spreading across all like a blanket. It patters upon acres and acres of lavender, running in rivulets down to soil below; it rattles against what little remains of a tin roof, sounding like stones in a tin can; it lightly beats on the floor below, first disturbing and then saturating the dust thickly coated there.

If someone were to listen very closely, picking through the pelt of raindrops, they might hear something almost unintelligible on the verge of their hearing. At that low volume, many noises blend, sounding like one another.

Ah, it is only the fluting, chattering song of the mistle thrush. Singing through the storm, as ever.

But this is hypothetical; no one else is around to listen, and so any bevy of small sounds are lost within the weather.

The scent of petrichor is still hanging in the air when she finally returns to camp, hours later. For once she is returning empty-handed, save for a sprig of lavender tucked into one of the straps on her pack; a little circlet of dusky green half-woven around the leather.

Miles away, a similar woven sprig is twined around a jacket zipper; it bounces a little with each step, sitting next to the wearer's heart.

oOo

Time ticks on, another year having now stretched out to its full length.

On a quiet morning that has just passed dawn, she emerges from her tent to find the entire campsite covered in saltgrasses. At first it is all she can do to stare. Then she swears so loudly and so virulently that the entire campsite is awake within a matter of moments. They poke their heads out of their tents, see the saltgrasses, and as one their faces fall. She swears again, feeling the shape of the oath as she spits it from her mouth; it's like a scene from a Nature-awful fairy-tale.

Once again the land is souring beneath their feet, salt-sickness running rampant. Her mother proclaims it to merely be bad luck, a soft, tired smile twisting the corners of her mouth as she packs. Leon sighs, says that this outcome was only a matter of time after the last Ikol spun through the area; it is a statement fitting with his vulpuskind nature. Not only have the saltgrasses sprung up in and around the camp, they seem to be springing up wherever the group walks in their territory. Tough, razor-sharp, and with very few uses, the cursed plants are the herald for what is to come; animals will flee, spirits will rise, and the land will be empty. For a time. The season of death will rule this patch of land for a year, maybe two, but then life will spring anew. The saltgrasses will wither, the animals will return, and people will walk these lands once again. Despite knowing all this, anger burns hot in her chest as she patrols. Stokes to a boiling point as she sees the unblemished fallen corpse of a fox, rigor mortis stiffening its form. Already it is happening. Despite the fox meeting such an inglorious end, she takes the carcass with her. It might be dead, but they must continue to live.

For now, moving is both top priority and imminent.

Quietly, Emily makes ready to journey to the farmhouse. She knows it is foolhardy to waste time in such a way, but she will go time and time again until he is present.

There is something sad about the building when she returns to it; it seems somehow emptier, somehow more abandoned. The windows stare out at her, dark hollows with nothing behind them. For once he is there when she walks in, idly rolling a pinecone between his palms. Even her footsteps sound empty, robbed of some piece of soul as her boots strike the hardwood floor.

It shouldn't be this easy to tell such a bitter-tinged truth, and yet the words come from her mouth as if she has been singing them all her life. He nods in agreement, speaks of his own suspicions as he viewed her group's territory from afar.

But there is a silver-running seam to this dark news; an offer that has stewed in her head the entire journey over, steeped in the waters of the bond built between them.

_Come with us,_ she says. _Please. We will not return here for many years, and who knows what circumstances will have befallen us by that point? Who knows what corners of the world we may get stuck in before that time?_

His expression is one of a man torn in two ways; tugged in one direction by his heart, tugged in another by his history. He fidgets, dithers. Something in him wants to say yes, the intent written on his face as clear as a row of buds about burst into a spray of blooms. But-

_It- It has been too long,_ he says. _I have been on my own for so many years, patterns and habits scrimshawed into my bones. To be alone is- is my fate, is writ within me._

_It does not have to be that way, _she says. _Being alone might be a learned habit in your story, but companionship is a habit that too, can be learned. It will be okay_, she adds, soothingly. _All we have to do is take things one step at a time. Each day is a new chance._

A tired uncertainty paints his face; a long breath is exhaled through his nose. Still, he does not resist when she takes his hands; when she leads him from the farmhouse for the last time; when they pass between the rows of lavender bushes in varying shades of dusty green, becoming coated in the herbaceous scent. She leads him, a modern-day Eurydice and Orpheus in reverse, all the way to the former campsite, now transformed into nothing more than trace marks upon the earth. A patch of worn grass here, the hole for a tent-peg there. A blasted ring where the fire once sat. The first forming of a desire path, soon to be erased by new growth.

The group – her family – are scattered around, performing final preparations and on the verge of departing. An array of faces look up as they approach, the pair of them walking hand in hand; some bear speculative expressions, others bear looks of quiet knowing. Curiosity and mild chatter buzz briefly in the air as she and he halt before them; kestrels standing before a parliament of owls.

_This_, she says, _is Trellis_._ And he'll be coming along with us._

It is as simple as that. They depart soon after, once a small series of inconsequential questions have been fielded.

As they walk, turning their backs on their home for the second time in a number of years, he gives a quick, soft nod at her. Thanks, of a sort, for bringing him this far. He will not bolt now – he knows it, she knows it.

In that moment both can almost swear that they see a shimmering silver ribbon that links and loops between them, around them; the proof of a bond built within the walls of a dilapidated old farmhouse, surrounded by a sea of lavender.

oOoOoOoOo

_AN: A lot of Stuff has been happening recently, and as a result this fic is basically the fic version of shaking up a bottle of coke and then uncapping it. Once it started coming, it just couldn't stop, and a lotta stuff is wrapped up in it, whoop._

_On a happier note, this fic owes its inspiration to three things:_

_Firstly, the excellent Phantom Of The Opera fic, __**Dead Water**__, by__**LittleLongHairedOutlaw**__, here on FF dot net! Kittens. It's so ****ing good, I __**love**__ it, go read it. (please)_

_Secondly, a particular photograph of lavender fields in France, which is the main inspiration for the setting and basically what I visualised it as the entire time lol. (I know the building is just a farm outbuilding instead of a farmhouse, but __¯\\_(__ツ__)_/¯ )__. Because FF dot net abhors links, just google 'Aerial view of an abandoned house in the middle of lavender fields, in Valensole', and you'll find it! It's the one where you cannot see any sky and the building is a third of the way down from the top of the photo._

_ /gallery/dGPusrJ_

_Thirdly, a moment when I was riding the bus home last week, saw a freshly harvested field that was barren and bare, and was like "Oh, a wasteland!"_

_Final Fun Facts about Lavender before you go:_

_Lavender is actually part of the mint family, and English lavender… actually originates in the Mediterranean, hm. I have a lavender plant now, her name is Lola. :)_


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